Two writers named Chris, two different backgrounds, two new hires for the team that writes “Treme.” Chris Rose basically willed his way onto the show. Chris Offutt’s path was a little different, but it basically started with a fan letter to novelist and “Treme” writer-producer George Pelecanos.

The Times-PicayuneChris Rose.

Rose made his first contact with co-creator David Simon while the show was shooting season one.

“I knew he was aware of my work, so I walked down to the set one day,” Rose said. “They were filming a second line in Treme, appropriately enough. I just walked up … and I said, ‘I think somebody is missing.’ I thought he would get that joke right away, but he didn’t. He said, ‘Who’s that?’ I said, ‘Me.’”

A former Times-Picayune (and, briefly, Gambit) columnist, Rose was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his post-Katrina columns, which were collected in the book “1 Dead in Attic.” He now works as an essayist for New Orleans Fox affiliate WVUE-TV.

“I began the process, over a year or two, of keeping in touch with him,” Rose continued. “I wasn’t really that picky about what I’d do. I just wanted to be involved in the project. It sounded fun. It sounded worthy. And every time I’d watch, it was filled with faces and names and writing and music by people I know and people I respect and people who are friends of mine, and I thought, ‘I’m missing out on something here.’

“I’ve never written a teleplay before, but I had never written a play before and I did that. I had never written a stage monologue before and I did that. I co-authored two songs with Dr. John on his last record. So everything I tried to write has worked out reasonably well, and I thought, ‘Well, I’ll try this.’ I kind of just bugged him for two years. It’s really kind of a classic story of trying to wear a guy down.”

Rose met with Simon and co-creator Eric Overmyer earlier this summer.

“It’s a looser and more informal process than I would’ve expected,” Rose said. “When we stood up at the end of the coffee, I looked at him and Eric Overmyer, who had come along. We were all leaving. I looked at them and said, ‘Did I just get the job?’ They said, ‘Yeah.’”

Offutt, an assistant professor of English and screenwriting at the University of Mississippi, was contacted by Pelecanos, an old friend, about coming aboard to write an episode for the coming season.

“I started out writing novels and short stories, as did George,” Offutt said. “And about eight or nine years ago I wrote him a fan letter, over the first couple of books that he did that just knocked me out. As a result of that, we really just stayed in touch with each other.”

A helpful nudge from Pelecanos helped Offutt place a pilot script, which in turn led to him landing writing jobs on “True Blood” and “Weeds.”

“This past year, George just reached out to me on this and asked if I would be interested in writing a freelance script for them,” Offutt said. “So of course I said yes. But really it started with me reading a novel nine years ago and writing the writer a fan letter, because I loved it so much.

“Not too glamorous. Really just reading a book I thought was amazing, and taking the time to write the damn guy.”

Offutt was already a fan of the show, thanks to a personal connection to the city in which it’s set. Both of his wife’s parents are from Louisiana. Her mother’s side lost five houses to flooding after the storm.

“My wife particularly had big interest in the show,” he said. “She surprisingly enjoyed it much more than I thought she would, given her family history. She just loved it for the portrayal of the New Orleans that she knew.

“I was quite taken with it. Quite taken with the characters, the emphasis on the music, the story lines. I found it a real honest depiction of genuine human suffering, sorrow and striving. I think that’s what got to me the most, this idea of striving under duress to regain a sense of home and maintain that identity, both personal and as a city.”

Much has been said about how these long-form dramas compare with novels, and clearly it is against that form, rather than say, Downton Abbey, that Simon wishes to be judged. Treme is fine television, but almost unbelievably slow. At the end of this season we will have 20 hours' worth - enough time for a reader to have polished off War and Peace. For all its patient construction of character and place, will Treme hold a candle to that, or to The Wire? At any rate, it will be no great hardship finding out.

Wendell Pierce is not yet a household name. However, to fans of US crime drama The Wire he is indelibly associated with one of the show’s main characters, Bunk Moreland. “I know that ‘Wendell Pierce, best known as Detective Bunk Moreland from The Wire’ will be the first line of my obituary,” says Pierce, in his mellifluous Southern drawl. “But I love it – I’m happy that I’ll forever be Bunk.”

For fans of shows like The Wire that slowly chip away at stories with subtlety Treme is a must. If your telebox taste buds prefer action, plot and big drama then this may just bore you. For me, it’s a show that is fantastically written and an incredible watch. Get yourself down to the Treme.

Dave Walker can be reached at dwalker@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3429. Read more TV coverage at nola.com/tv. Follow him at twitter.com/davewalkertp.